


Repair Manual

by stoplightglow



Category: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, Resurrection, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:15:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27249427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stoplightglow/pseuds/stoplightglow
Summary: They’re machines, she and Red. And machines can be rebuilt.
Relationships: Blue/Red (Danger Days)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	Repair Manual

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wondercurls1917](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wondercurls1917/gifts).



> this was written for the 2020 killjoys halloween gift exchange run by subdivisionsmile on tumblr. i hope you enjoy, ace, and happy halloween!
> 
> thank you to saint mercy for beta <3
> 
> **this work only follows canon from the true lives of the fabulous killjoys: california. warning for themes of death and grief.**

I. MOTHERBOARD: CONNECTS ALL THE PIECES

Blue pries her eyes open. Beneath her is sand, grainy in the folds of her clothes and against her body. Above her is Destroya’s metal hand, its fingers forming bars around her like a cage. That must be what kept her safe while her system was rebooting. On every side of her is a parade of robots who were set free by Destroya. Their metal bodies kick up dust as they race over the Battery City border and into the zones, yelling about how they’re free, free, free, now that Destroya has brought electricity back to the desert. 

Blue’s first thought is that they fucking did it. She awoke Destroya and they saved everyone, just like Red always believed would happen. 

Her second thought is that no, they didn’t save everyone. 

Her third is that if electricity exists over the border now— 

They’re machines, she and Red. And machines can be rebuilt.

II. BODY: PROTECTS WHAT’S INSIDE

A Better Living satellite crashes down into the zones late one night when the sky is purple. It sends up a cloud of sand so huge that it blows all the way to where Blue is staying and makes the whole camp cough up dust. But Blue doesn’t find out until she hears it on her tent neighbor’s radio. 

_ —Just an hour ago—The desert rose up to meet the sky—Zzzt—Down is up and up is down these days, motorbabies—Better Living’s satellite breathes fire like a dragon on the edge of Zone Three— _

Blue presses a hand against the white, graffitied side of her tent. “Did I hear that right?” she asks through the fabric. “A satellite came down?”

“Came down and lit up,” rasps her neighbor, a maintenance bot who lost an arm last month in the rush over the border. “Dust now, but next comes the smoke, I bet you.”

Blue bursts from her tent and runs through the camp, out into the open desert, feet pounding. She fights against sand and smoke even as she goes further into the cloud. The crashed satellite has to be at the end of it.

Better Living Industries believed they could make satellites out of droids because they thought droids couldn’t feel anything. But she and Red, all the survivors Blue has met at camp, they feel more deeply than any human Blue knew in the city. 

The tunnel of sand and smoke gives way to a massive, flaming satellite. Nearly all the white paint has peeled away to reveal clumps of grey metal underneath, not even melted down; through the heat haze, Blue can see the shells of robots cheaply welded together at awkward angles. 

She runs to the burning satellite without a second thought for her self-preservation. There, smoldering under a broken-off antenna dish, is a porno droid’s body. Her leg is caught. Blue pulls hard to free her, puts everything she’s got into it, doesn’t even flinch as another fuel container in the center of the satellite explodes and sets off a roaring flame. 

Blue emerges from the smoke with a mangled but intact porno droid body in her arms. The body is dented in some places, scratched in others, but it doesn’t matter. Blue falls to her knees, head hung, and crawls as best she can across the sand. 

When the people in Battery City looked at Red, this is all they saw of her: a body. Blue never saw her that way. 

There’s no color left, no indication of who the droid used to be. It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s about who she’ll become. 

Blue’s not just holding a heap of metal. She’s holding Red’s new beginning.

III. SENSORS: REACT TO EXTERNAL STIMULI 

Past the edge of camp, in the middle of a night so cold it makes Blue’s axes creak, a firefight breaks out. Still attached to her charger, Blue stretches her wire to peek out of her tent and confirm what she’s hearing. Pink, yellow, green, white from a scavenged Better Living ray gun — they go off like exploding stars. 

Blue should love the sight. So many colors lighting up the desert: they mean that she’s free. That she made it out. 

But all she sees in that explosion is Red, lifted up into the air by that final, fatal pulse of electricity. Skin cracked. Eyes so bright Blue couldn’t meet them.

In the brightness, she sees Red dying. 

Most of the time Blue feels like she never made it past the city border, either. 

She holds the metal shell of the porno droid she rescued close to her, cradles it in her lap as she rocks back and forth. She wishes she could tear out her charger, plug it into this new body, and have it wake up as Red. 

She’s not there yet. For now, she cowers as the world explodes outside, promising herself and the body in her lap that soon electricity will give Red life instead of zapping it away. 

IV. COMMUNICATION SYSTEM: LISTENS, UNDERSTANDS, DECIDES, REPLIES

Blue held Red’s head in her lap, the two of them on their cot in their hideaway in the Lobby. Neither of them could sleep. Blue had an even worse than usual night working the streets; Red was hurting so much that not even plugging in her battery could soothe her. 

“If you can’t get another battery, or any more Plus,” Red started, but her voice fell off. 

Blue ran her fingers down the juncture of Red’s neck and shoulders, down her back. “We don’t need to talk about this right now.”

Red lifted her head weakly, adjusting herself in Blue’s lap so when Blue looked down their eyes could meet. “Then when? What if we don’t. . .” She closed her eyes, clearly in pain. After a moment, she said, “I’m obsolete, Blue. We can’t pretend otherwise.”

Blue shook her head. “I’m not ready for that. To think about you being gone.”

“I won’t be gone.” Red placed her hand on Blue’s, her touch the gentlest thing Blue had ever felt. She spoke slowly, laboriously. “Droids never die. I’ll become a satellite and watch over you and Destroya.”

“What if that doesn’t happen?” Blue said. “No satellite? No Destroya?” She let the rest exist between the lines: What if Red died, just died, and became nothing more than another metal corpse in the Lobby?

“Destroya will come for me. For all of us,” Red said. Her fingers were limp, but Blue still laced them with hers so they could hold hands properly. Blue didn’t question Red; she believed what she believed, and if it brought her peace, Blue could only be grateful for it. Red deserved peace. She deserved that, and so much more. A new battery. A better life.

“I love you,” Blue said.

“Love you, too.” Red was quiet for a minute, visibly gathering strength. “If I’m wrong, Blue? Bury me like people do. Put me to rest like I was more than just some droid they made.”

V. MECHANICAL EXTREMITIES: ENABLE MOTION

Being as compact as they are, silicon CPU chips slip through the cracks in the Zones, fall through people’s fingers like grains of sand. Everyone in camp that Blue asks, they tell her the same thing: go see Tommy Chow Mein. 

The hoarder’s nest Tommy Chow Mein calls a store is home to nearly every item under the desert’s relentless sun. Blue combs through the piles of scavenged technology, rusted odds and ends, her fingers clinking against them with the sound of metal-on-metal. Under a bundle of wires that look like they’ve been ripped out of something, she finds the black and white chip Red needs. 

Blue’s problem is, her pockets are empty. The only thing she ever owned that was worth anything was her body. If she even owned that much. 

She’s trying to figure out how to steal the chip without getting into a clap when Tommy Chow Mein calls from the back of the store, “Can I help you out, miss?”

She should run for it. For Red. But Tommy Chow Mein is already walking over, and it’s like Blue’s wires aren’t hooked up, she can’t get her legs to move.

“I was just looking at. . .” She holds up the CPU.

“Ah.” Tommy Chow Mein leans against a table cluttered with Power Pup cans, Chinese takeout boxes, and roaches. “For yourself?”

“For a friend.” No, she can say it out loud here. “For my girlfriend.”

_ For a reanimated corpse I’m making into my girlfriend _ might be a stretch, even for the Zones.

“Well, I’d be delighted to find out how you’re planning to pay.” He looks her up and down, making her wish her short white jumpsuit covered more.

“I don’t do that anymore,” she says coldly. His eyes snap back up to her face and he nods, once.

“Alright. We can still do business.”

Reluctantly, she says, “I don’t have carbons, though. Or anything to trade.”

He lifts an eyebrow. “Odd that you’re out shopping, then, huh?”

Blue sighs. “I know. I just, my girlfriend really needs this chip.”

“Lucky for you, you do have something to trade.”

Anger flares in Blue. “I told you, I don’t—”

“No, not your body.” Tommy Chow Mein picks up a takeout container and unfolds the top of it. A few roaches crawl out. He throws it back onto the table. Blue just waits; maybe she’d be disgusted by the display if she hadn’t seen cockroaches twice that size in the Lobby with Red. 

Tommy Chow Mein says, “I have some metal sheets that need hauling and I’d rather not do it alone. Help me out with that, and you’ve got yourself a CPU.”

Blue watches him carefully. She knows how to tell when a man is lying, and Tommy Chow Mein isn't. That’s not to say she trusts him. She doesn’t, she’s smarter than that, but it’ll be easier to deal with a man in a tie in the Zones than it was a Better Living robot in a glass booth.

“I can do that.” They shake on it. Blue goes back to camp and holds Red’s new body lovingly to tell her the good news.

VI. BATTERY: CONTAINS LIFE

While she’s waiting on Tommy Chow Mein for a few days, Blue decides to tackle what used to be the most elusive piece. A battery for Red.

The walk from camp to the city border is long and unforgiving. She gets sand deep in her sprockets. Nothing about it feels worse than the moment she reaches the border, though; she stops dead in her tracks. This is where the electricity used to end. This is where she lost Red.

Now it’s a part of how she’ll get Red back. She has to remember that.

In tiny, cautious steps, she crosses the border into what used to be Battery City.

The city is only a city in shape anymore: most of the buildings are still standing, she can see them on the horizon past the Lobby. But the streets are empty. Either no one remains, or any Better Living loyalists left behind are hidden inside now that they’ve lost their temperature controlled, mind controlled lives.

Her trip inward to Social Services, where Better Living denied Red the battery that would have saved her, feels almost too easy. No one stops her as she picks her way through the debris covered streets. No security cameras zero in on her as she walks into the building. No robot directs her to floor forty-seven and then forces her to leave empty handed.

No, Blue walks into a ghost of a building. The glass of the teller booths on the first floor have been smashed, and the shards crunch under Blue’s boots as she walks up. Maybe there was a riot when Destroya came into the city, and all the dying robots outside Social Services finally had their revenge. 

Or maybe the Better Living robots jumped right through the barriers because they wanted to escape, too. She never really thought about it that way before. 

It isn’t until Blue leans over the counter of the booth and grabs a boxed battery from underneath it, simple as that, that it really hits her. Battery City is gone. The rules she lived by are gone.

If she can just get Red back, no one can stand in the way of their happiness.

VII. CENTRAL PROCESSING UNIT: MAKES SENSE OF INPUT

Alongside Tommy Chow Mein, Blue drags sheet after sheet of scrap metal from behind his shop to the outside of a shack at the bottom of the sand dune. It’s hard, carrying hammered-out car hoods and the like, and Blue can feel the labor wearing on her body. Still, it’s better than any night she spent working around the Lobby.

At the bottom of the dune, she and Tommy Chow Mein prop up two more sheets each. Blue takes a breather, leaning against the side of the shack and closing her eyes against the sun. “Who needs this much metal?” she says, mostly to herself.

Tommy Chow Mein says, “The bastard who bought it from me had a lot of friends.”

Blue blinks her eyes open. “What’s that mean?”

“He had a lot of friends,” Tommy Chow Mein repeats. “You’re new out here, huh?”

That much should be obvious from her clothes. “Yeah.”

“Yeah? Yeah, well.” He kicks up some sand. They both watch it arc back down to the ground. “Take a guess at what we’ve been hauling. Not just a guy looking to make some fucking solar panels.”

Blue shakes her head; she doesn’t get it.

“Really?” Tommy Chow Mein looks at her almost pitifully. “You’re standing on a new graveyard. Once someone slaps some paint on them, these sheets are headstones."

“We’re moving. . .headstones? For the dead?” Blue’s insides grate against themselves like they need oil. 

“Sure are, miss.”

“Who died?” she asks weakly.

“Zonerunners die every day,” Tommy Chow Mein says. “It’s part of the life. Live, then die. Buy from me somewhere in between the two, if you’re smart.”

“But who. . .” The stack they’ve made of metal sheets looked small before, in comparison to what they’ve still got left to transport, but now it looks massive. “That many people have died out here?”

“No, come on. This place isn’t full. He’s got some friends to bury, and then, well, I guess he’ll bury whoever else comes along. Maybe the bastard will put me under here someday too.”

“That’s awful,” Blue says. 

“Why?” Tommy Chow Mein tilts his head. “Someone’s got to do it. You want to be running into dead bodies all over the desert?”

The thought makes Blue curl in on herself a little. “No, but I just — who could be so close to death?”

“Shit if I know how the bastard does it. All that matters is, they get a proper burial before the Phoenix Witch comes.”

“The Phoenix Witch?” Blue’s heard that name murmured around camp, but she still doesn’t have a full grasp on what it means. 

“The Phoenix Witch comes to collect them.”

“Why would you want her to collect them?” Blue says frantically. “If you lose someone, why wouldn’t you want to keep them?”

Tommy Chow Mein fixes her with a careful look. “Think of it this way. We’ve all got to let go. Better to let go the right way, huh?”

VIII. MEMORY CARTRIDGE: KEEP LIVING WITHOUT FORGETTING

Tommy Chow Mein’s CPU chip slides into place right where it should in the rescued droid’s flank. The stolen battery goes between her shoulder blades. It’s an intimate act, or it was, when Blue used to do it for Red back in the Lobby. 

This is Red now, she reminds herself. This is intimacy.

Red’s new body comes to life bit by bit. Legs, arms, hips, chest, moving up until her eyes snap open and she says, “Hello?”

“Red.” Blue drops her hands from Red’s back and moves so they’re face to face. But when she sees Red’s open, alive expression, she can’t take it, and she has to drop her face into her hands. “Red, I can’t even stand it, Red. You have  _ no _ idea how much I’ve missed you.”

Red’s voice pitches up and down as it calibrates. “Where am I?”

“You’re in a tent with me,” Blue says, her words tumbling out on top of each other. “At a camp for other bots in the Zones. We’re in the Zones because we’re free, Red, because Destroya woke up and saved us all from Better Living just like you always said.”

“I said that?” Red sits up a little straighter, using her hands behind herself for support. “I’m sorry, you’re a blue model, right? I think you’ve got me mistaken for someone else. I’m not a red model, I’m green.”

“You’re not green,” Blue says. “You’re Red. You’re my Red.”

“I’m sorry.” The droid shakes her head, and her newly-moving axles creak. “Didn’t they stop making red models years ago?”

“You’re Red.” Blue reaches forward to touch the droid, like maybe that will trigger some memory, before she stops short. 

Memory. 

She forgot to get Red’s memory cartridge.

Red’s memory cartridge, which burned up with the electrical surge at Battery City’s border.

“Oh, fuck,” Blue whispers. “You’re not Red.”

“No. I don’t know who Red is.”

“She’s gone,” Blue says, even though that’s not who Red is at all. Red is the love of her life, and the only reason Blue survived Battery City. No — Red was the love of her life. And she was the only reason Blue survived Battery City. “You were gone, too.”

“Is that what. . .” The droid looks down at herself; her body is disfigured and dented in ways Blue had been ignoring up until now. 

“You were in a satellite,” Blue says. “I — I’m sorry, do you go by Green?”

“I never really went by anything,” the droid says softly. “I didn’t know anyone besides my clients. I guess I could use Green.” She pauses. Something inside of her makes a humming noise, and she pulls an unpleasant face. “I was in a satellite? I was dead, wasn’t I?”

“Yes,” Blue says. She sounds disturbed, she can hear that by her own ears now; it’s an ugly, grating noise.

“And you said. . .the city has changed. Better Living has changed.”

“Better Living is gone.”

“Right.” Green grimaces as another part of her system clicks and whines. She looks so much like Red in that moment, and that makes Blue’s heart break even further, that the way she remembers Red is in pain. “So where am I supposed to go? What am I supposed to do?”

Blue has to take a moment just to hold herself still. This is so much worse than she could have imagined. She was so sure she was on the right track; she would have Red again; they would be happy together. Instead, she’s resurrected someone who doesn’t belong here, reanimated her into a world that makes no sense to her.

“You could stay in this camp,” Blue offers. “It’s all bots here.”

“I’m not sure if—” Whatever happens in Green’s body makes her cry out, cutting her sentence off. She holds herself tightly around her middle. Slowly, she gets out, “If I was a satellite, I was meant to be gone.”

“That’s not true,” Blue says automatically. “Plenty of droids die before they should because Better Living wouldn’t take care of them.” She imagines Red, slowly losing life while they held each other every night. 

Another groan of pain. “I wasn’t meant to be here. I don’t think my body agrees with it.”

Green reaches for her back and pulls open her own battery compartment.

“What are you doing?” Blue grabs for Green’s hands, trying to take them in her own even though they hardly know each other. “Green, what are — you just got here!”

“Don’t be worried.” Green’s voice has fully calibrated by now, so Blue knows her calm tone is real. “Droids don’t die.”

Her black and white battery falls to the floor of the tent, and Green’s form slumps forward. At the sight, Blue keels over, her body shaking violently. Another death. Right in front of her.

Blue stays there, making terrible hacking sounds and unable to stand, for so long that night falls outside. 

When morning comes, she picks up Green’s once again lifeless body, cradles it against her, and walks out of camp following the rising sun. Her movements are slow, since she’s still running on yesterday’s charge, but she makes it to Tommy Chow Mein’s store. 

Tommy Chow Mein sees her come in and drops the cans he’s sorting. He says, “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve already found someone for that bastard’s graveyard.”

Blue can barely stand anymore, can hardly support the weight of herself, Green, and the entire world that seems to be collapsing on top of her. Tommy Chow Mein gets there just as her knees buckle and manages to keep her upright.

“I lost a friend,” she says pathetically. 

“Guess we’re going back down that dune again,” he says. Blue’s just thankful he doesn’t ask any hard questions. 

Tommy Chow Mein carries Green’s body so Blue can save her energy. He also digs the grave once they get there. Blue knows she should help, but there was only one shovel in the shack. She makes a pathetic gesture scooping out sand with her hands before Tommy Chow Mein just tells her to sit back.

Once the grave is deep enough, Tommy Chow Mein asks, “Do you know what she believed in?”

Blue looks down into the hole he’d dug. It seems so immense that sunlight shouldn’t be able to reach the bottom of it, yet the warm morning light beams right down. “Destroya, if I had to guess. But I never got the chance to ask.”

“Well, we don’t have to decide. They’ll know.”

Together, they lower Green’s body down into the grave. It’s so much less sudden than the way Red had gone; Blue has to watch as Green lies still, as Tommy Chow Mein throws the first shovelful of sand over her. It’s gut-wrenching. Green’s body slowly disappears, and then her face is gone too, just another part of the desert.

“Grab a metal sheet,” Tommy Chow Mein instructs. He ducks into the shack and comes back with a can of spray paint. “This is how we remember people out here. Dig the headstone into the sand, there, and then you can paint it.”

It takes both of them to push the metal sheet deep enough for it to stand on its own. Once they’ve got it, Blue uncaps the spray paint, shakes it, and tests it in the sand by her feet. It’s red.

On the headstone, she paints a satellite, just like the one she dragged Green from in the first place.

She starts to tremble again. Tommy Chow Mein has to take the spray paint from her. She feels like she’s grieving everything. Maybe she is, since she’s lost everything she’s ever known.

“Let it out now,” Tommy Chow Mein says. “Get it out here. You can’t carry that all with you in the Zones, it’ll kill you.”

“It’s my fault,” Blue says. She has to sit down and pull her knees against her chest. “All of it.”

“Blaming yourself. That’ll kill you, too.”

“I just wish they’d gotten to be free.” She means both of them, Red and Green. “My girlfriend chose to burn up at the border, and the droid we just buried only got a few minutes without Better Living before she pulled her own battery out.”

Tommy Chow Mein smooths the shovel over the top of the grave. He says, “They were free, miss. Dying on your own terms, that’s what freedom is.”


End file.
